Human beings are born with several gifts but seldom use them to their advantage. In order to understand the value of a gift, one needs to compare it with its absence.
The human race, for example can be compared with other living beings. Humans enjoy the gift of imagination and reflection, which are absent in animals. On the other hand, animals are born with certain gifts which are absent in humans. For instance, the gift of no revenge. Animals generally act out of instinct when threatened.
Instinctual reaction
So, what makes humans, humans? It’s our higher consciousness. Wrapped in this higher wisdom, comes the gifts of reasoning, choice, insight and much more. However, these gifts lie squandered as most individuals don’t use them adequately because instinctual reaction seems easy and effortless; ‘you blame me and I blame you’, ‘you shout at me and I shout back’, ‘you hold a grudge and I hold a larger one.’ It’s a war and it seems endless.
The result is a consistent and constant build-up of grudge, layers of resentment, disappointment. Etc. Life then looks like nothing but a long sad story of pain and suffering, where one feels shortchanged by life.
All this, without realising that the gifts are lying unused to script a life one wants.
Here are five gifts that individuals must not squander.
1. The gift of choice: When operating from an instinctual level or the lower levels of consciousness, six feelings dominate human actions: desire, anger, greed, infatuation, arrogance and jealousy. (kama, krodh lobh, moh, mada, matsarya). These give rise to karmic debts. (Animals aren’t governed by these feelings). Imagine the inability to pay off karmic debts and be forced to live in suffering? Choice offers a route to restore balance, tip the accumulated negative karma to positive. If we didn’t have the conscious choice of changing lower thought consciousness to higher, for example, to act in kindness or be a beneficiary of it, how would mankind shape up?
2. The gift of reflection: Reflection is an attribute of wisdom. Wise people reflect to take a daily stock of emotions and actions. Reflection helps to make amendments with a disagreeable past and allows closure of troubled energetic transactions to start fresh. Reflection or contemplation allows humans to get in touch with their core values and helps see if values and actions are in alignment. If we didn’t have this gift, actions would be made, and received, at a gross, instinct-based level.
3. The gift of imagination and visualisation: Imagination is akin to daydreaming. Visualisation adds a positive weight to imagination, a purpose to it. It lends direction and goal to imagination. Imagine living without a sense of purpose. How does that feel? Empty? One can visualise a better life, a better future for self with these two mighty gifts. When used for positive pursuits, imagination and visualisation are fount of hope, inspiration and joy. If for a moment, one feels that the future looks bleak, one can re-create future, using choice and imagination. Creating is not a small feat. Actually, humans create all the time depending on what the dominant thought is. Visualisation allows meaning to the creation.
4. The gift of clair senses: Our five sense organs are mostly oriented outwards. When projected inward in moments of reflective silence, humans can perceive subtle energies. These energies are innate guiding compass to help negotiate life. These include: the gift of clairaudience (hearing but not of the mind), a clear knowing (clair cognisance), a feeling (clairsentience), clear vision (clairvoyance), among other clairs. One can train to tune to them by cutting off the external chaos. People act intuitively as well. Also note, a random act of kindness actually is never random, it is the inner spirit guiding force; some acts seem illogical to the mind, but gives sense of fulfilment to the heart.
5. The human life itself: Consciousness revels in growing. We are consciousness in human body. Our soul wants to grow. Human life provides an opportunity for growth and evolvement. Life is a gift itself. How we choose to live life is up to us. Whether we choose to operate from a sense of incompleteness, which is manifested in lower consciousness acts or we choose to live from a sense of fulfilment, guided by higher consciousness. We are endowed with choice. If not used wisely, the tug-of-war continues.
You see, the war lies within us, not outside.
Disclaimer: Urmila Rao is a chakra balancing meditation coach, Theta Healer and a sound therapist. All the ideas expressed herein are her own and not professional advice or medical prescription. She can be reached at: milarao2018@gmail.com
